Former cleaner turned actress, Olivia Coleman moves viewers to tears with her emotional Oscars speech after winning best actress (video)

Olivia Coleman melted hearts with her inspiring speech after being announced as the winner for the best actress category at last night’s Oscar.

The 45-year-old British actress was visibly shocked when her name was called at Sunday evening’s 91st Academy Awards for her role as troubled Queen Anne in The Favourite. She burst into tears as she walked up to the stage to accept her award.

The mother-of-two grew emotional a number of times as she made her speech, reminiscing on her past as a penniless cleaner. She also made it a point to encourage young girls dreaming and practising their speech for the future. She asked them to keep at it because “you never know.”

This is Oliva Coleman’s first Oscar win and nomination.

Below is the full text of her speech:

It’s genuinely quite stressful. This is hilarious. I got an Oscar!

OK, I have to thank lots of people. If, by the way, I forget anybody I’m going to find you later and I’m going to give you all a massive snog and I’m really sorry if I might forget now.

But Yorgos, my best director and the best film, and with Emma and Rachel, the two loveliest women in the world to fall in love with, and to go to work with every day, I mean, you can imagine, it wasn’t a hardship.

And to be in this category with these extraordinary women, and Glenn Close… you’ve been my idol for so long and this is not how I wanted it to be and I think you’re amazing and I love you very much.

I love you all. Thank you, Lindy King, my agent who took me on over 20 years ago, thank you so much. And Olive and Hildy and Bryna, who made me do things that I said no to, but she was right.

My mum and my dad… well, you know. And my kids who are at home and watching, look!

Well, if you’re not, then, well done, but I sort of hope you are. This is not going to happen again.

And any little girl who is practising their speech on the telly, you never know. I used to work as a cleaner and I loved that job, I did spend quite a lot of my time imagining this.

She then said that she was being asked to “please wrap up” so she blew a raspberry as the audience laughed.

She continued, thanking husband Ed Sinclair:

Thank you, and my husband Ed, my best friend, I love you so much; 25 years, you’ve been my best supporter, he’s going to cry! I’m not.